On Askren’s personality, fighting style and
future: “Ben is always going to be that character. Ben’s
never going to become a different type of personality in this
space. He’s never going to be Quinton “Rampage” Jackson. He’s never
going to be Michael
Chandler. He’s going to be Ben. Everybody’s got their own pull
and traction points in terms of how they connect with consumers.
Ben’s is just different than other people’s, and I don’t know that
that’s positive or negative. In terms of his long-term future here,
I don’t know. I’m not sure what will happen with Ben. I’m not sure
if he’ll continue fighting here or if he’ll go and fight somewhere
else. … He is, as everybody’s described him, wildly
one-dimensional, but when people say that to me about Ben Askren, I
say well, if you don’t like the dimension, then change it or fix it
or beat it, and nobody has been able to. So I don’t know. We’ll see
what happens with Ben.”

On War Machine
and offensive Tweets: “When God was putting those chips in
everybody’s head that stopped them from saying exactly what they
were thinking, he never got one. He just says whatever he thinks,
and oftentimes disregards who it will offend or how it will impact
people, and that’s a tough part of it. … The reality with Jon, and
that’s the reason that we’ve kept him and I’ve kept working with
him, is I don’t think his intent is to offend people. I honestly
don’t think that he’s intending to offend people, and there’s no
doubt that he does, but I think that he has a very different
perception of things than almost 100 percent of the rest of us. …
He’s not an animosity-driven, hating type of personality. He just
digests information and spits it out differently than anyone I’ve
ever met. Sometimes it offends the heck out of people. We’re trying
to keep him in the organization and trying to put a cap on some of
that, but we’ll see where it goes.”

On releasing Paul
Daley: “Daley’s was one that was an assault offense
and he had pled to it, and some facts that weren’t accurate came
out from him in terms of what had actually happened. When we
finally got the police report, we just all looked at each other and
said look, we’ve got to cut him. He’s a charismatic fighter. He’s
fun to watch fight. He knocks people out, but we just can’t have
that around.”

On the dispute Bellator had with Eddie
Alvarez: “The same kind of things happened with the
UFC. They happened with Tito [Ortiz]. They happened with Randy
[Couture]. There was huge litigation that lasted an extended period
of time and kept him out of the cage, and there were a lot of angry
statements made by both sides. You’ve seen it with recent fighters
with them, and it’s going to happen. It’s just part of the
alliance. When you’re dealing with 170 or 175 different
personalities, there’s going to be conflict. It’s just the nature
of the beast. You would be a fool if you thought you could get
through it without having a conflict with [fighters].”

On Quinton “Rampage” Jackson’s upcoming reality
show: “I’ve been part and parcel of some of this ‘Rampage’
stuff that’s going on for reality [TV], and it’s amazing. I mean,
it’s amazing. It’s crazy good content. I’ve seen the dailies on
this stuff, and it just looks like incredibly cool programming.
It’s a look at Rampage we’ve never seen and a personality that just
leaps off the screen.”